


Excerpts from Spock's Journal

by cable69



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5658463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cable69/pseuds/cable69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I may have a difficult time writing this. I was in a shop, in Cassidian, when I saw this book and felt compelled to fill its pages. I do not know how I will do so. I do not express much. I suppose I will write little, and what little I write I will write slowly, and after a time it will fill itself up, and I will be surprised when I turn the final page.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excerpts from Spock's Journal

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on ff.net; unedited

1:  
I may have a difficult time writing this. I was in a shop, in Cassidian, when I saw this book and felt compelled to fill its pages. I do not know how I will do so. I do not express much. I suppose I will write little, and what little I write I will write slowly, and after a time it will fill itself up, and I will be surprised when I turn the final page.

Today is my first day on the Enterprise. The captain accepted my request to become her first officer, despite our disagreements in the past. I am pleased.

5:  
It is unknown to me why I do not use stardates in this. I suppose because this is meant to be a casual collection of thoughts, not an official log, which I compose separately. This is a place to sigh onto paper, and spill my secrets.

If I had secrets to spill, I suppose.

12:  
… and what I had said earlier, about Mr. Chekov and vodka, was evidently ignored by Mr. Scott, prompting the incident which I have described above. Dr. McCoy was not happy while he patched the engineering crew up. (This evaluation of the doctor’s attitude is an understatement, it must be noted.) Mr. Sulu told me that Dr. McCoy is never happy, which is an illogical state for a human, but I have been made thoroughly aware that the doctor is a highly illogical man.

I do not know why I relate such stories. They seem to amuse the others, and that is why I feel compelled to keep a record of them…

 

14:  
Some days are wonderful. On some days I feel as if I could sing from my seat. Today was a day like that. Mr. Sulu and I watched the sun rise over Carin from the observation deck. The glow lit up his face, and softened the texture of his skin. 

22:   
…which makes me wonder about Barron’s Theory of Electronegativity, when we pass through such ion storms. They always manage to knock something out, often as not on the transporter.

Lunch today was roast, an Earth dish I had never enjoyed. I did not, of course, consume the meat, but the potatoes and gravy were incredible, despite being replicated. I noticed the captain looking very much at home as he consumed his meal…

46:  
I have been on the Enterprise for a month… 

The texture of the ship is light. (I slip now into the abstract.) She should be heavy, like a mountain of responsibility, but at times our duty weighs on us like feathers on the wings of birds; it gives more than it takes, and allows us to fly, to soar around the universe and poke our noses into dusty corners of the galaxy. The hallways are meant to be pleasing to the eye, even after years (for we spend years of our lives in space), and the artificial gravity is always just right, so that even the most space-nervous of us recognize the tug of home on our bones…

55:  
Lt. Ferrington died today. I could have stopped his death, but I had to protect Mr. Chekov and Mr. Scott.

It shames me that two were worth more than one—that I ever thought two could be worth more than one. But I did. I made the empirical decision to save two people and allow one to be killed.

Who does that? That judgment is not mine to make, and yet I made it.

I do not feel like dinner.

70:  
… something about his hair. I babble, of course. T’Pring was offplanet when Vulcan was destroyed. Our marriage remains intact.

92:  
Even here I cannot say what I would like. I suppose that means I never can.

100:  
I have written in this book one hundred times, and I am only two months into my five-year mission on board this ship.

I have more to say than I thought, though as I read back over it, most of what I write is quite illogical. I must vent somewhere, however.

179:  
Ms. Uhura’s birthday today. I gave her a painting, from Vulcan. She was quiet when she saw it.

She cried, later; she went to the restroom, and when she came out, I could smell the tears on her skin.

198:  
His shirt has permanent creases in it at the elbows. He pushes the sleeves back often to work. I sketched the folds on a PADD, realized what I was doing, and erased them.

238:  
… removed ourselves from the pond, shore leave having been suspended indefinitely. I caught the way Mr. Scott stared at Ms. Uhura. He did not notice me watching him. Humans rarely notice me watching them. Except for the captain. He always seems to know when my eyes are on him.

270:  
… nearly died when the machinery threw him against a wall. I tripped running to him; my mind was completely on fire, in a panic—what if he were dead? I think that I have never sounded so desperate in front of other people as I did when I called for the doctor.

He has recovered. I felt strange until he returned to the bridge to take his rightful place in the captain’s chair, which I quickly vacated for him. For some reason, the thought of his form resting in the memory of my body’s warmth was enough to make me excuse myself from the bridge.

The readings from Yewer XI are abnormal. We shall be sending two probes, one equipped to do a biometric scan…

322:  
Fascinating plant life on Eruk V. Mr. Sulu and I spent hours wandering around the botanical gardens there while the captain got himself into trouble and the doctor and Mr. Scott, Ms. Uhura, and Mr. Chekov extracted him from it. Mr. Sulu asked me to call him “Hikaru” while we were not on duty. I do not know what to think of that.

I brought back a rhacias, an angiosperm with tissue-thin gray leaves. It reminds me of opals in jewelry stores on cloudy days. When I had placed it in my quarters and watered it I realized that I had obtained it for my mother, subconsciously.

I have not cried over her in months, and shall not now.

359:   
Half a year on board the Enterprise today. I am writing in this more and more often, and I know why.

392:  
Cannot escape the grace of the clouds. On planet, today, their frowning texture loomed, and spat rain at us. Cool drops of life, and the rising, steamy scent off of fertile ground. (The crops there are large and radiant, a true source of energy, truer than any dilithium crystal.) Did not even miss the hum and the echoing beep of the bridge. My uniform was soaked and clung to me, and I pretended anger, but truly wished to stay planetside longer. Had to beam up with the sawder shipment. My uniform is still drying, giving up its lusty scent to the antiseptic air.

Watched the rainclouds flit and flirt across the planet from the observation deck as we finished our orbit. Nobody knew.

408:  
… simply fascinated by the theories of evolution and plate tectonics. The incredible perceptive ability of early scientists to grasp such complex concepts without so much as a standard-issue tricorder is beyond me. Wegener and Holmes nailed down the theory in the early 1900s, even though it was not accepted until the late 20th century, and not perfected until the late 21st. How did they know? How can they have guessed that the solid rocks of any planet were once liquid, and shall become so again, and that each molecule of our earth passes through its molten core, and that the glaciers carve out the northern reaches of our planets, and that the magnetic field reverses itself once in a blue moon, and…

409:  
… when you take into account that the theory of gene flow was introduced some time in the mid twentieth century, and that it was followed for so long, one becomes rather enamored of human minds, who were so able to trace the buildup of their species to an early ancestor on the African continent, whereas the Vulcans, while highly intelligent and driven, lapsed in mysticism for years even after Surak, and were not able to trace their own evolution until…

410:  
… the extreme stupidity of a number of sources from the same era, who railed against evolutionary theory, who could not understand the development of an eye, or the natural synthesis of organic molecules from the primordial swamp. How thick must one be to insist that something has not occurred simply because you cannot understand it? From that stance, police and detectives across the world would shrug off complex murders and crimes since they clearly could not have happened…

411:  
I seem to have irritated the captain by talking exclusively about biology and geology at our most recent chess match. I shall note his disinterest in the subjects and refrain from ever attempting to explain epigenetics or the Moho to him again.

I did beat him two to one, though.

445:  
I encountered Hikaru and Pavel in a lower supply deck when I went down to do inventory. They were sweaty and tired and walking close to each other. I was faintly alarmed to smell each on the other, and greeted them with a slight frown, which they seemed to take as disapproval (I realized later), and hurried away, shamefaced and offended. I was in the middle of the inventory when it occurred to me what must have happened. I have considered apologizing to them for my rude actions, but found that route to be an inadequate one. Instead, I rearranged the bridge shifts so that they share alpha, beta, and delta together, not just alpha.

482:  
Blood reveals itself dramatically under duress. I have never seen it fountain before. I am still splattered with Scotty’s blood. He is alive, barely. I am in sickbay with him.

I closed my eyes earlier and they stuck together, the stuff is so thick on my lashes. I need to clean my face, but I cannot leave him, not while he is so close to death.

537:  
Duty uneventful. I haven’t seen anything recently other than the interior of my brain. The ship is starting to feel small, cramped and tiny and the scenery is too bright, even though the walls are spelled for calm—not spelled. I’ve been reading too much old Earth fiction in my free time, which has been ample. But the walls do shine like the inside of veins.

560:  
The captain saved my life today. I must go sit. I remember his arms were cold and strong.

598:  
I have been much too distracted and vague of late. Even though this is a casual diary, nothing more than a journal for comments and sketches, I must keep my mind organized. Organization is the key to clarity, and if there is anything I need at this current time, it is clarity, clarity and understanding.

603:  
Despite being fully aware that this is my private journal I still find myself unable to write certain things within it, as if writing them would make them somehow more true, were that even possible, or logical. I have no explanation for my reluctance to commit to paper my feelings for—

604:  
Ship status is normal, with slight fluctuations in the warp core accounted for by the rerouting taking place on the second engineering deck. Mr. Scott and myself have seen to the problem. We also scanned sectors 455.44443 beta and delta today, with readings fed to the star charts and ship’s computers for processing.

I will treat this journal the same as my log, now.

634:  
… note of the readings from the Salarian sector. They will be very important in my future research. I would describe the captain’s feelings on the matter, but suspect that I would become distracted in doing so.

Doctor McCoy’s research on a cure for the Tarian flu has progressed lately, with the addition of Doctor M’Benga to the team…

670:  
I have had enough of being logical. Today has been the worst. Pavel spilled his coffee on me an hour ago, Leonard is being vastly irritating, the Klingons will not stop firing torpedoes at us, and the captain tore his shirt sleeve in the recreation room this morning and has been too busy to don a new one, meaning that I have been attempting to deal with the sight of his extremely muscular upper arms all day. I am officially out of patience. I cannot, of course, express or reveal this frustration to any crewmember, but the extreme depth of my displeasure can be most accurately and discreetly expressed to you, journal—

Why am I talking to this book? I need to meditate.

679:  
… made a comment about my strange behavior as of late. I distracted Leonard by pointing out that as human behavior is always strange, how can he identify strange behaviors in other species? Sufficiently incensed, he had a yell at me, and then stalked off.

The captain watched me for the rest of the day, though. I tried to ignore him.

688:  
Nyota and I had lunch together. She told me about her family. Her mother was an architect and her father was her mother’s draftsperson. I noticed that she traced words in the condensation of her glass, said the word “brisk” more often than most people do. Her idiolect is otherwise free of duplicate words. I am intrigued.

694:  
He is so disarmingly kind sometimes.

709:  
I do not know what I will do about T’Pring, or if I will need to do anything about her. I am courageous, but not brave; the captain is brave. I do not have enough spontaneity to be brave. I could never tell him.

726:  
… had a wonderful time on the planet, though I would never admit it to the captain. The restaurant he, myself, and Scotty visited served a number Vulcan dishes. I persuaded the captain to try one, pok tar, which he enjoyed.

765:  
Sometimes I think he does not deserve her, or vice versa; they are so different, and clever in such varying ways. But today I heard him whisper to her in Swahili, meaning that he took time to learn her native language, and she smiled at him, a smile meant only for his eyes. I did not, of course, look away.

861:  
The words fall out of my head sometimes, and I am so mad and sorrowful at the loss of them, and I doubt their beauty, thinking they were an illusion of the night and the huge stars, but I suppose that as long as they fall down to an earth and creep into the soil and wrap their arms around a seed, which sprouts and grows into a leafy canopy more writers can rest under and draw more words from, then their escape is forgiven, and I move on.

That was my roundabout way of saying that what I was going to write seems to have disappeared from my mind, but that this is… okay (an interesting human word I have picked up).

945:  
We are friends, now—firm friends, and true. He trusts me and I him. Leonard is not jealous of what we have, for what they have is different. A human friendship, I suppose. Our friendship is different—kinship. We are brothers, you could say, though I would not—the word restricts me, bites back my emotions cruelly.

946:  
I have decided to officially admit my feelings.

I do not expect this to be difficult. It involves only a pressing of pen to paper in a slightly different pattern than usual. 

I should go ahead and continue, now.

As my mother used to say, here goes nothing.

I am in love with Jim.

Why did it feel so—so freeing to admit that?

947:  
I see no logic in this but humanity, so no logic at all.

983:  
Very late at night, the wall that makes things sharp falls away, and the edges of the world cease cutting your eyes. I like thinking at night, more than I like thinking during movement. My thoughts can fill and feel the room.

I wish he were beside me.

1034:  
One year on board the Enterprise. I have averaged exactly 2.83287671 journal entries per day. I am writing this from observation. There is nothing visible but space, which means (I like to think) that everything is visible. 

 

Spock—

I found this on the observation deck. Would you mind seeing me in my quarters after dinner?

—Jim

 

 

1035:  
You saw what he wrote, at the back of the book. I will have to resign Starfleet. Did he read you? Tell me, you damn chunk of paper—did he?

1036:  
I think he did.

He kissed me on the cheek.

I’m out of pages. How surprising.


End file.
